Mass Media and Democracy - An Inherent Paradox? Some Implications of the Effect of the Agenda-Setting Function of the Media on Democracy and Problem-Solving

Mass Media and Democracy - An Inherent Paradox? Some Implications of the Effect of the Agenda-Setting Function of the Media on Democracy and Problem-Solving

Modern technology and American economic ideologies have created a new kind of central authority over information. The inherent structure of those tools used for free expression (the media) impedes that very same free expression of the first amendment of the United States Constitution. In other words, there is no longer any information vehicle in twentieth century society that can guarantee free expression. This paradox is apparent through an analysis of the "Agenda-Setting Function of the Media" The many studies that have been done in this provide enough evidence to conclude that media gatekeepers formulate meaning · for its mass audience -- an audience which includes society's key decision makers and political players. Dialectics, in true Hegelian sense of process, must exist between and among individuals within a given society. Namely, that problems are resolved on the basis of the principle of contradiction in order for those individuals to be critical thinking problem-solvers. Yet, it is not possible for dialectics to exist in a propagandistic environment, and American Democracy, as Jacques Ellul notes, is a propagandistic envirorunent. It is my contention, therefore, that American mass culture is a "groupthink" culture, and that American Democracy, using its traditional definition, is a be-spontaneous paradox. Because society is a system, the small, problem-solving group system have become self-feeding closed systems. Therefore, information circulated within this closed system is ideological redundant, thereby rendering the system entropic.